The owners of the vacation home we’d rented clearly liked puzzles. On our first day there, I pulled a used one down from a shelf and started it. On the last night of our stay, a few of us worked late trying to finish it. But we couldn’t. Three pieces were missing, and though my […]
Simon says . . . put your hands up in the air. Simon says . . . hop up and down. Now spin in a circle. Wait! I didn’t say Simon Says! It’s a classic childhood game. Kids invent things to do and compete to see who follows the instructions best. But the players get […]
Four years ago a teen-aged boy pointed a gun at me while demanding I give him my money. It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in Oakland, California. I was standing at the flagpole in front of the elementary school where I’d recently been assigned to teach. My husband Chris and I had ridden our bikes […]
I used to have a kind of waking nightmare. It started in college. I’d be alone in the dorm bathroom, my toiletry caddy in hand, going down the aisle of shower stalls, their white plastic curtains like ghosts’ hems, all in a row. All of a sudden, the dread of what lay behind those curtains […]
My grandmother told me she could see their fires at night, dotting the dark rise of the forested bluff as her family’s wagon passed along the dirt road after the summer church revival. She told me you could hear their music, too, the strings weaving their way down the wooded hill. Music like joy, but different from […]
My husband made me cry on our honeymoon. We rented a house that was set back from the road and surrounded by trees. The second night we kept hearing noises on the roof. Since we are people who consider the next block over from the ghetto the country, we were a little spooked. We were […]